Greetings from Berlin,
it seems that Catalina with its new implementation of 'Apple Music' replacing iTunes has borked the functionality of the Apple Remote with VLC (3.0.
. After a bit of troubleshooting I have been able to reproduce the following behaviour (on a 2012 Mac Mini):
If I reset all VLC preferences to default the Apple Remote partially functions: Play/Pause and Volume Up/Down function properly. No other buttons function except the FF button, which causes Apple Music to come to the foreground and go fullscreen. However, after that the remote stops functioning for VLC altogether. To get it to function once more, I must again reset all VLC preferences to default.
Hoping a fix is released sometime soon.
love VLC and it has been my go to media app for decades - thanks for all your work.
cheers,
Wm